Teach Active Listening: A Fun Printable for Performance Class!

Teach Active Listening with These Performance Thermometers

You know the problem.

You carefully carve out a time for performance class for your students.

You give them a great pep talk about bowing, taking time to relax before they play, and especially paying attention while their classmates are playing.

Student #1 gets up to play and all goes fairly well.

But by the time student #3 is playing, the rest of the students are getting fidgety. Avery is playing with a pencil. Piper is staring out the window. Latecia is trying to get Beck to laugh.

Your Students are Bored with Piano Performance Class!

But let’s not blame them. What have they really been told to do? Listen? Isn’t that one of the most difficult thing any child has to do?

  • Listening is pretty abstract and kids like things that are concrete.
  • Listening is completely relative. How do you know if you’ve really “listened” to a piece of music anyway
  • Listening is auditory. You can’t see what you are listening to. You can’t touch what you are listening to. Once again, it’s not very concrete or immediate.
  • Listening is passive. We as teachers know the difference between active and passive listening, but listening to music is all pretty passive to a child. On the other hand, the kid sitting next to your Beck is interactive…now that’s going to be much more interesting to Beck!

How do we engage students in a more active form of listening?

thermometer for performance classI’ve tried a number of forms to help my students during performance class. I still use these periodically and you are welcome to as well. There’s the elementary and intermediate Performance Class Worksheet or you can even try the “shortened version,” all of which can be found on the Ear Training Teacher Resources Page. thermometer for performance class But lately, especially for young students, I’ve found this Performance Thermometer Worksheet to be fun! It’s a set of 4 thermometers and you can write in any specific skill you want your students to listen for. Then, during the performance, the students will color in the thermometers to display how well they think the performer did. If you laminate these, you can ask them to erase their markings and change the things they listen for easily.

What listening categories should I use?

Here are just a few of the many possibilities:

  • Tempo
  • Dynamics
  • Artistry
  • Memory
  • Artistry
  • Bowing
  • Poise (taking a few moments to think through the piece first. Continuing if a mistake is made, etc.)
  • Pedaling
  • Articulation

By using this worksheet, you are making the abstract art of listening into something much more specific and measurable. Of course you want to remind students that they need to be kind and honest when evaluating other students, because they will be the same toward you.

I’d like to try to teach active listening. Any more tips?

It is sometimes helpful if students have an additional copy of the music in front of them so that they can see the details in the music. Other times, it is helpful to not have the score so that they can listen better (such as when listening for clear or muddy pedaling).

Want some holiday charts?

Scroll up and click on the big green button so that you can get a Thanksgiving and Christmas chart as well as more ideas on how to hold a successful and fun performance class! I hope this is helpful to you! Leave a comment and let me know what you use in your own performance classes!

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29 thoughts on “Teach Active Listening: A Fun Printable for Performance Class!”

  1. What a great idea, Wendy. I love the thermometers and the kids will love coloring them and getting to “do” something during the performance. Here’s my tip for listening: I will give the listeners a copy of the music being played and ask the performer to stop somewhere during the piece (usually the performers choice of where) and then ask the listeners to point to where we are on the score. It’s very interesting to see all the different places the fingers end up! As always, thanks for sharing all your fabulous ideas!

  2. Hi Glenda,

    Just click on the little picture or on the text that says “Performance Class Thermometer.”

  3. Hi Drema,

    It’s right underneath the little story I tell at the top. Right before the big letters. The long blue box that says: DOWNLOAD EVEN MORE HOLIDAY PERFORMANCE WORKSHEETS HERE! Do you see it? Let me know if you don’t. (Sorry for the all caps…I just cut and pasted.)

  4. Thanks for the fun holiday listening sheets, Wendy!! I love to use these as focus tools for younger kids when listening. They really act as a springboard for thoughtful comments and productive sharing after the listening.

  5. I used Wendy’s Performance thermometers in my last Group Lesson and the students loved it! They were so excited to be able to “judge” each other and were very complimentary in their critiques.

  6. VERY CUTE! Please explain, each student gets one card, evaluates the performer, then you discuss it; then, they redo for next performer? Thanks!

  7. I usually laminate the chart and then have all the students evaluate the student that is playing. At the end, I ask, “What did you guys think about dynamics?” Then we discuss that briefly and go through the other subjects. It doesn’t take very long but gives each student an idea of what they need to work on. I hope that helps!

  8. Hi Heidi,

    Thanks for alerting me so I can check! The buttons and the images appear to be working just fine for me. When the box pops up, you’ll need to type in your first name, your email and then click the button under that is under your email that says “Click here. Then check your email.” Then after you click that button, you’ll go to a thank you page. After that, allow 0-5 minutes for your email to come with your resource in it.

    If that still doesn’t work for you, please let me know. Send me an email (or leave another comment) with:
    1. Your email that you entered so I can check to see if it went through
    2. The browser you are using (firefox, chrome, internet explorer, safari, etc.)
    3. Also, be sure to add wendy@composecreate.com to your email contacts in your email program to make sure it gets to you.

    And I’ll check on it for you!

  9. I love these Wendy and I loved the idea that the performer might stop at any given point too. I am definitely going to use these ideas.
    I am thinking that screen sharing the music might be a good way to do this using ZOOM!

  10. Hi Wendy
    I want to start performance classes this year for my studio, but am unsure how to choose a time that everyone can manage. How do you go about setting the calendar for that? Also how do you convince people that they should be taking part? I can see that some parents may not value them as they are going to be ‘free’…

  11. I also meant to ask how long you allow for each performance class and how many people you allow in each group. Thanks Wendy.You continue to inspire.

  12. Hi Alison,

    That’s a great question and the first thing to remember is that you actually won’t be able to set a time that everyone can manage. So don’t have that expectation for yourself! One way to choose a time that works for most kids is to survey your parents and only give them 2 or maybe 3 options from which to choose. Use google forms or something easy and make the question so that they can choose more than 1 time. Then ask them to indicate all the time slots that will work for them on a given day.

    Then, you can just choose the one that works for a majority of your students. I would also not say that it is free – it’s a part of their tuition package, so they’ll get that their money is going further if they attend.

    But don’t expect everyone to attend. Families are busy and they have to do what’s best for their schedule.

    I hope that helps!

  13. I would just limit it to what students you think you can do within a 45 minute time slot – so it depends on the length of their pieces and you need to allow extra time at the end of each student to discuss the charts. Any longer is too long for kids to listen attentively, and you’ll definitely needs those charts to help them. You should also break up the 45 minute session by doing something in the middle so they are not required to sit that long.

  14. I’ve tried multiple times to download the free charts and it doesn’t work. It’s worked for me in the past, so I’m wondering if maybe the link is broken…? Thanks for your help!

  15. Hi Jennifer,

    It looks like the emails that I send to you are bouncing! So if you can email us, Contact, then we can help you try to figure out why this might be.

    Thanks!

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